Landscape & Layers The Workhouse Dunstable, 5 Ashton Square, Dunstable, LU6 3SN. 8 April- 18 May 2024
My oils have featured in The Art Edit this year in House & Garden Magazine, April-June editions.
The Art Trail part of The Hitchin Festival 2023 July 2023.
HVAF Open Studios Group Show at Baldock Arts & Heritage Centre Sept 2023 & '24
The Mardleybury Gallery, Datchworth
I returned to painting in 2022 after 18 years practising Millinery, designing, making and selling hats. Oil painting was and still is my first love. I continue to explore my favourite theme in oil paints of fungi and the woodland floor. I love the variety of fungus I come across at various times of year. I am always on the look out for some I have not seen before. I also realise that I love the forms of dropped leaves in their various forms of disintegration and composting and their incredible unexpected forms as they crinkle, mottle, wither, curl and change colour, from vibrant colour to steely grey, going through almost all the colours of the spectrum. Sometimes just the colours inspire me or a fallen stick or two might give me inspiration from the dynamics of their fall and position on the ground giving rise to what I think is an exciting composition.
I have always drawn from being a very small child. I started painting landscapes in oil years ago aged 10. I absolutely love nature, wild life and the natural world and think I have imparted this to all of our children. I was a voluntary tour guide at the Natural History Museum as a young mother. “ I studied art at the University of Hertfordshire BA (Hons) Fine Art 1997. I have run a professional studio for several years and taught art and life drawing before going on to study and practice millinery working as a model milliner until 2020. I returned to painting in the Autumn of 2022 and feel I have ‘come home’. I haven’t stopped painting since. My paintings recently have been based on my woodland walks recording my impressions of the amazing fungi I find there. I am still working on this subject matter and have also started working on some large landscapes taken from ideas developed during my travels. I also like the change of focus .
I exhibited in the Art Trail, part of the Hitchin Festival as my first exhibition in a long time last year and also showed my paintings at the Baldock Art and Heritage Centre, Sept 2023 as part of the Open Studios as a new member of HVAF. When I wanted to get back into my art I returned to oil painting classes for a couple of terms to get my confidence back and at the same time returned to Life Drawing on a regular basis. Drawing is something I have done all my life. Life drawing really helps (tests) my observational skills.
Just recently, Feb '24 I have completed my first floral painting, much as a challenge to myself, as I have felt that flowers in oil can look a bit 'lumpy' so the challenge to myself was to try and attain and show their delicacy. This painting is called Last of the Summer Flowers which I have entered into a competition at my greetings card printers.
I have 3 greeting cards available of my woodland themed work ‘Magpie Inkcap’, ‘Babes in the Wood’ and ‘Moss and Pinkgills’ (see above) available to purchase at £3 each in biodegradable cellophane wraps...or they can be found in the Mill shop at Jordans Mill. Message me on beabrownart@gmail.com.
